Ontario couple donates $10m to IWK

Myron and Berna Garron made a $10 million donation Friday to the IWK Health Centre. The gift is the largest private donation in the IWK’s 103-year history. (DEVAAN INGRAHAM)

UPDATED at 5:49 p.m. Friday

An Ontario couple with ties to Nova Scotia made a $10-million donation to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax on Friday.

Myron and Berna Garron’s gift, announced with a drum roll, is the single largest private gift in the IWK’s 103-year history.

The money will be used to create a new, acute, mental health inpatient unit, a state-of-the-art neonatal intensive-care unit and enhancements to the women’s health-care facilities.

“The transformation of our inpatient mental-health unit has been a dream of ours for a long time,” Anne McGuire, IWK President and CEO, said during the announcement.

“A beautiful new unit will better align with current standards, while creating an environment that is safe, welcoming and therapeutic.

“Myron and Berna, on behalf of the patients, families, staff, physicians and volunteers, thank you so very much for giving us 10 million more reasons to smile.”

The Garrons were joined at Friday’s ceremony by their two sons and seven grandchildren.

“This is like New Year’s Eve but a million times better,” Myron Garron, 77, said to a packed audience.

Originally from Westport, Digby County, Garron began a career with the Bank of Nova Scotia in 1952. He managed several bank branches, including one in Toronto. He later made a career change that led to a hugely successful automotive manufacturing business.

“It really is an honour and privilege for us to be here today,” said Garron, who worked in fish plants during his summers as a young man.

“Not in a billion years, growing up in Westport, would I have ever considered myself to be in this position.”

The couple’s decision to donate such a large gift to the IWK began a few years ago when their son, Anthony, told his father about the hospital’s desire to establish a few family rooms to allow families to remain close to their critically ill children.

Garron immediately thought back to when he, at age six, was sick with polio and his parents were miles away. He asked to speak to the “movers and shakers” of the IWK, who later told him the three areas that were in most need of help.

When the Garrons made a $30 million donation to the Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children in 2010, the gift was reported to be the largest private donation to support pediatric cancer research and treatment in North America. The Garron’s son, Michael, died at age 13 in 1975 from a rare soft tissue cancer.

“When you’ve had a sick child, you know what other parents are going through,” Berna Garron said in an interview about their philanthropy to pediatric health care across Canada.

Shauna McKay-Burke, a licensed practical nurse in the IWK’s mental health unit, moved many in the crowd to tears as she shared her own daughter’s story of being “incredibly tortured” by hallucinations and paranoia as a result of psychosis.

Eight months ago, Olivia, 16, was admitted as a patient in the very unit that her mom cares for other mentally ill children and remained there for three months.

“These voices, they were at her all day long and we had to watch her suffer,” McKay-Burke said.

Before the onset of her illness last Christmas, Olivia was an honours student, swim instructor and lifeguard, her mom said.

“By the end of January, she had hit rock bottom.”

McKay-Burke spoke of feeling powerless and full of fear about what people would say about her daughter and if they would judge her.

“I work in this profession and I believe in it with all my heart but I’ve seen so much. I know how people with mental illnesses suffer, especially with stigma,” she said. “Most of all, I did not want suffering or stigma for my daughter.”

As a result of what she witnessed her daughter go through, McKay-Burke said she takes extra special care to comfort the parents and families of other patients.

“I get it. I know what it is like to be on the flipside of that hallway and it’s not so much fun,” she said, her voice breaking.

“But today is a happy and special day ... and I would like to say how appreciative I am of the most generous gift to that unit.”